CLA discussion - James Bottomley's blog post today

Stewart Smith stewart at linux.vnet.ibm.com
Fri Jan 12 09:02:21 AEDT 2018


Michael.E.Brown at dell.com writes:
> https://blog.hansenpartnership.com/gpl-as-the-best-licence-governance-and-philosophy/
>
>
> A very timely article from James Bottomley!? He addresses CLAs and
> provides a very compelling argument against them, rooted in equity.
>
> "Further, the IP rights tend to be a focus for corporations, so simply
> joining the controlling entity (or taking a licence from it) instead
> of actually contributing to the project can become an end goal, thus
> weakening the technical contributions to the project and breaking the
> link with end users."

One of the big arguments is that it increases the amount of work you
have to go through to contribute to a project.

It's probably the same for you, but if for us, if there's a CLA you have
to sign, you get to go speak with legal. *NOBODY* wants to go speak with legal.

> Is there a danger of this happening on this project?

I would dearly hope not. A number of us would actively fight it.

-- 
Stewart Smith
OPAL Architect, IBM.



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